I got tired of people telling me how wonderful Neil Gaiman is; I always shied away from his books, thinking them too sci-fi and fantasy for me. Time to give him a look.

I read many reviews and readers’ comments on Amazon and elsewhere.  He is much loved.

I decided to plunge in at the beginning with American Gods, an epic story of a newly freed convict’s journey through and for the soul of America.

I’ve read the first 25 pages (I skip back and forth with most books), and I’m hooked on this one. I’ll go straight through it when I return to it in a week or so.

He is a terrific writer. His voice is unique.

Four reviews called it a “masterpiece,” and I’m on board for this experiment, although it’s the second book on my exciting list. He apparently does a stunning job of capturing the complexities of America.

Next up is Tomorrow and Tomorrow And Tomorrow and Tomorrow, the runaway young person’s novel by the excellent writer Gabrielle Zevin, author of The Storied Life Of A.J. Filkry, which I have read and loved very much.

This book is described as a love letter to life, a rich yarn about love, creativity, disability, failure, and redemption, with the rich and mysterious world of the American gaming industry as a backdrop.

The book is red hot, especially among college kids, gamers, and geeks.

I’ve read the first chapter, and the hype looks pretty justified to me so far. It’s being called brilliant, gorgeously written, so far, so good, so true. I’m going to keep going with it.

I just finished a quiet, compelling, almost mystical story of a troubled family in mid-coast-Maine by Adam White. He is a writing coach and lacrosse teacher who grew up in Maine and lived in Boston.

In this novel, he tells the story of Ed and Steph Thatch’s rise and fall in one of Maine’s mid-coast lobster and tourist towns.

Maine is one of those countries that seems to fall off the radar of the coastal-obsessed American media. If it didn’t happen in LA,  Boston, or New York, it didn’t really happen.

But it seems a great deal happens in a place like Maine, and it is refreshing and entertaining to read about it. The book is called The Mid-Coast, A Novel, by Adam White.

Ed is a lobsterman who wants to give his family everything they want. He can’t do it catching lobsters, so he decides to do it by robbing wealthy ocean-front homes and setting up a drug ring that is devastating Maine’s small towns.

His daughter Allie gets admitted to Amherst on the basis of her athletic ability (lacrosse) and Ed falls to the great Boomer child disease and becomes Boomer-obsessed with her success in the sport. It takes over much of his life and too much of hers.

Like everyone else in the family, Allie loves and tolerates him. So does her brother E.J., who becomes a police officer and is slowly sucked into Ed’s corrupt orbit.

Ed manages to build a whole life around this double life without getting caught, but the novel opens up as Ed’s secret world is beginning to unravel. The drama here is that Ed ends up destroying what he most wanted and some of the people he most loves.

The narrator Andrew is a newcomer who decides to return to his home state, raise his family there and  uncover the rise and fall of the Thatch’s

Maine’s small towns are the real story here, told with grace and in a reflective, calm and detailed manner. White does a good job of pulling this family story together and capturing the flavor of Maine. He makes it interesting without being horrifying or overly dramatic.

The book is gripping in a low-key way; you know a reckoning is coming; Ed is willing to sacrifice anything for his family, who know something is wrong but looks the other way. Time is not on his side.

But there are no pyrotechnis. White keeps his cool as he tells this story, and one by one unlocks this family’s secrets.

Ed is complicated. A skilled thief and drug dealer, he is even willing to sacrifice his own life if it comes down to that choice – family or his own hide, and of course, it does.

I won’t give the ending away, but the story gripped me to the end, and White didn’t soak the tale in blood or horror.

It wasn’t necessary.

Too many novels I read go nuts at the end, one plot twist after another banging into each other like a fireworks finale. This book is dignified and restrained.

I  read Mid-Coast through in two sittings. I recommend it highly, it’s an unusual book, and it’s the first book I’ve read by a man in more than two years, except for Douglas Stewart’s superb and wrenching Dougie Bain.

The last book on my list is also excellent; it’s called Nightcrawling; it’s a novel by Leila Mottley, who was the Poet Laureate of Oakland, Calif, and was 17 years old when she wrote this brilliant but wrenching story of Kiara, who becomes a sex worker getting past around to corrupt police offers, she sells her body to help pay the rent for her and her brother after he father dies and her mother is placed in rehab.

I’ve mentioned it before. The book captures the grinding heartbreaking choices poor people make every day of their lives.

I’m putting this book aside, not because it isn’t excellent – it is amazing, but because I want to give it my full attention when I read it, and it deserves to be read from start to finish. It is also a challenging book to read because it eats your heart.

I’m excited to take on Neil Gaiman; I love his voice, humor, eye, and heart from what I’ve read of this book and a few excerpts from others.

Gaiman has written many books and is already a cult figure in publishing. I’m eager to see what he’s all about, and I will definitely write about it.